bryde's whale. 1085 



that date until I left Saldanha Bay a fortniglit later, the total 

 catch of B. hryclei consisted of eleven specimens. Almost all of 

 these specimens were found unusually far (40-70 miles) from 

 the sea-shore, surrounded by large numbers of crustaceans, Eu- 

 phausiidse. As a rule the whales are to be found quite close 

 to the coast, and it is probably the richness of crustaceans 

 further out to sea that has tempted them to go out there. It 

 is worth mentioning that these crustaceans were Euphausiidse, 

 which the Blue whale prefers, and not Calanidse, the chief food 

 of Rudolphi's whale: 



Food. 



The food of B. hrydei consists chiefly of fish, apparently 

 , usually a variety of herring which is often found in large 

 quantities (many hectolitres) in its stomach. This, for instance, 

 was the case with a male examined by me in Saldanha Bay on 

 September 12th, 1912. It sometimes takes a species of mackerel 

 one foot or more in length, and in Durban more than a hectolitre 

 of this fish has been found in its stomach. 



B. hrydei is very voracious on the whole — more so than any 

 other species of its genus. As an illustration of this, Capt. L. 

 Fredriksen told me that he had many times seen it hunting 

 among large crowds of small sharks, and that he had found 

 sharks of a length of more than two feet in its stomach. A case 

 fi'om Saldanha Bay which was related by Captain Christoffersen, 

 and mentioned by many others, was most astonit;hing : they had 

 found there no less than 15 large penguins (Spheniscus demersus) 

 and "malagass" {Sida capensis) in its stomach. These birds, the 

 moment the whale reached the surface of the water, had probably 

 dived down into its open mouth endeavouring to catch fish in 

 that abundant hunting-ground, and had thus themselves been 

 involuntarily captured by the whale. In similar cases observed 

 among B. horealis, the birds have always been spat out of the 

 mouth again, and it seems hardly possible that such large birds 

 as those mentioned could be swallowed by this species at all. 



B. hrydei is not dependent for food on the occurrence of 

 crustaceans in the sea and so does not migrate, but is genei'ally 

 seen very close to the coast pursuing fish. 



Like the fin-whale, B. hrydei occasionally takes crustaceans and 

 then of a larger kind, the Euphausiidse. 



Biology, etc. 



In its biology B. hrydei is most like B. acutorostrata and 

 B. physcdus, and when the Norwegian whalers started their trade 

 in South Africa they were doubtful as to whether they should 

 consider this species to be a fin-whale or a " sei "-whale {B. 

 horecdis). In Durban many of them preferred to call it a 



PBGC. ZooL. See— 1913, No. LXXII. 72 



